FYI, Joanne Chang has a vegan chocolate cake in her book Flour that’s decent. I think it’s for a 6” pan, but works for cupcakes too.

I have her book and I have 6 inch pans. I’ll check it out, thank you.

I also have Extraordinary Cakes which has a vegan recipe. It uses Earth Balance in place of butter.

On egg substitutes, I checked Chef Bo’s book and he feels egg substitutes work fine. I checked into his Chiffons and he uses egg yolks. I have to look into whether the egg substitutes will be a favorable replacement.

All-Recipes has a conversion chart and allows i cup of butter to be substituted with 7/8 cup oil.

My hope is that I can convert Rose’s recipes successfully using alternative ingredients. I hope.

FYI, Joanne Chang has a vegan chocolate cake in her book Flour that’s decent. I think it’s for a 6” pan, but works for cupcakes too.

Hi Sherrie, Thank you for your recommendation. I made Joanne’s recipe. My cake was good but over-baked. I checked at it’s lowest temp recommendation. The top appeared baked but the inside was gooey. I baked it an additional 5 minutes only to find the top of the cake had cracked and mounded. I was using Rose’s Cake Strip. For some reason, I always have timing issues with the recipes in Flour. Next time I bake this, I think a 6 cup tube pan might be good to try.

So, I split the cake and layered it to try to disguise the over-baked cake.

I made the Vegan Chocolate Frosting from Extraordinary Cakes using Benacol for the fat. It was delicious.

The whole cake tasted very good and there was not 1 gram of cholesterol or saturated fat in it.

But, the spreads such as Benecol do not have saturated fat. Can that be used for baking?

People report mixed success with the various spreads. It probably contains some quantity of water and whipped air. You might try weighing a portion then boiling off any water to see how much is left. You can then get an idea of how much water is mixed in. The air shouldn’t cause a problem as long as you measure by weight. Once you determine the percent water, we can come up with a formula for converting butter quantities to Benecol. It would be an interesting experiment.

Hi Charles. I found the weight difference to be 4g. I used 113g of Benacol. I believe that is very similar to butter.

I found the weight difference to be 4g. I used 113g of Benacol. I believe that is very similar to butter.

Hmmmm, that sounds really low, much lower than butter. When looking at the ingredient label, water is number two after Canola oil, which means there’s a lot of it.

The data doesn’t jibe. A tablespoon of Benecol has 70 calories, but butter has about 103, which suggests a lot more water (or non-fatty stuff) in the Benecol. The light version of Benecol is over 50% water, but I can’t find that data for the regular spread. The calorie information suggests about a 43% water content; taking into account the other stuff in the spread, I’m guessing the water content must be almost 40%, at least double that of butter.

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I didn’t get those results at all. Perhaps I should have boiled it longer???

You would need to boil it until it stops boiling. Oil doesn’t boil. (At least, it would catch on fire before it did.)

I’m pretty sure, though, the spread contains less fat and more water than butter. To get the same fat content in your baked goods, you’d have to use about 1/3 extra. But that would introduce more water into the recipe and I’m not sure what effect that would have. If that water were available during mixing, you might could reduce some other liquid, but with the water suspended in an emulsion in the whipped spread, it may not be available during the mixing phase and may only leak out when the fat melts in the oven. I’m speculating, of course, but I know that when I use softened butter instead of melted butter in my dinner roll recipe, I have to add more water, which suggests that the water inside the emulsion isn’t available.

But try it and see!

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If error is corrected whenever it is recognized as such, the path of error is the path of truth.

I did some research and Earth Balance seems to be the favored non-oil replacement for butter in baking. Earth Balance suggests you substitute the same amount of Earth Balance for butter. I will probably go that route in place of Benacol for baking. I haven’t been to the store yet, and I want to read the package of earth Balance first, but it seems to have great reviews for taste and texture in baking.

I didn’t get those results at all. Perhaps I should have boiled it longer???

You would need to boil it until it stops boiling. Oil doesn’t boil. (At least, it would catch on fire before it did.)

I’m pretty sure, though, the spread contains less fat and more water than butter. To get the same fat content in your baked goods, you’d have to use about 1/3 extra. But that would introduce more water into the recipe and I’m not sure what effect that would have. If that water were available during mixing, you might could reduce some other liquid, but with the water suspended in an emulsion in the whipped spread, it may not be available during the mixing phase and may only leak out when the fat melts in the oven. I’m speculating, of course, but I know that when I use softened butter instead of melted butter in my dinner roll recipe, I have to add more water, which suggests that the water inside the emulsion isn’t available.

But try it and see!

I will, Charles. I am curious to know.

I will also call the company on Monday to see what they say about it as they provide a cake recipe with the product.